Victim Mentality

[All Systems Go]

I was just watching BBC programme 'HARDtalk' and Ahmed Rehab, a 'senior figure in the Council on American Islamic Relations' mentioned that US Muslims have a victim mentality and that they should focus on the positive and look at how to regain power and achieve equality. there also seems to be a similar issue (from what I've heard) in the UK Muslim community and this is partly what was discussed.

From my experiance I have seen clear evidence of this amongst the mainstream of public opinion as well. there seems to be this overarching feeling that if you are a minority or an immigrant you are in a better position than if you are white and born here.

to an extent I would say the media is to blame for propagating this feeling but to put it all down to that would be to over-state their influence. So where does this 'victim mentality' which seems to envelope an awful lot of people (regardless of race or ethnicity) come from and what can be done to combat it?

[dda]

None the less, there is an increasing tendency to absolve oneself from responsibility for whatever is shit in ones life.

Part of it is that people are constantly being told that they don't have much control over their life.

It also seems that quite often those that are being convinced that they are victims are at the same time being manipulated by some person or group who feed their power base through the alienation.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by dda

Part of it is that people are constantly being told that they don't have much control over their life.

Really? Growing up I seem to remember being told by both educators and the media generally that I could become whatever I wanted to be, that whatever destiny I wanted was pretty much equally available to me as to everyone else in the land. Of course, that was nonsense even for me (a white male born in the first world with no obvious disabilities) but I didn't assume the opposite was true either (that I was stuck in life and it was somebody elses fault). I can imagine others reacting differently though. So perhaps if we didn't fill people's head with such nonsense in the first place, we might find them easier to deal with.

On the personal level though I would tend to agree with the popular notion that "successful" people tend to take the blame for things that don't go their way (even where it's not their "fault" as such). Conversely shitter people tend to blame externalities, irrespective of the cause. But of course, that's dreadfully glib (as T&F has hinted at).

As I've probably related beofre, I heard a story about someone who suffered some form of food poisoning, fell into a coma and sufferred horrific paralysis / other nerve damage. Upon awakening, within minutes of finding this out the man asked for some sort of crutches (or whatever) and said "Well, I can't sit around moaning all day, I've got work to get on with."

Obviously such a response is inspirational but one would hardly blame someone who in the same position fell to pieces and who felt they were the victim of at least circumstances. Especially if their early upbringing wasn't condusive to building a strong personality type.

More generally, beyond people's individual lives there are positions which are slightly nuanced - the amount of control an individual has over something like climate change is absolutley tiny in most but that doesn't mean individual actions (recycling, energy saving, etc) are unnecessary. I tend to find this concept difficult to get over to some people though.

[Appocomaster]

I think in some ways the problems 'these days' is that blame just gets shifted around. All the big organisations / companies are to blame, and recently things like "it's not the winning it's the taking part" "just do your best" and so on - if you don't do well it's not your fault, you're just a victim of circumstance. You're accepted as a person for who you are, and are not made less by faults.

We are being told that we are "free", as Dante said, but not what we're free to do. They overload us with choice and potential, and neglect that pretty much no matter what you do you still need to work hard. Some "free" people end up happily doing nothing, because they can.

For every person that is now free to do what they want in this age of love and acceptance (...), there's others that struggle because there's no obvious direction and they'd have done better in the old system of just going through education and getting a 'standard' job at the end of it.

Anyway, getting back to the point about victim mentality, perhaps this partly relates to legal pressure. Everyone who is in 'the wrong' can potentially get sued, so no one is willing to take the blame, it gets passed around and ends up on big organisations. The victims are just those poor unfortunates who would do well but for these evil, corporate forces. Cruel, uncaring members of society who don't go out of their way to help you probably get a fair amount of blame too. Watching someone snivelling about how awful everything is when it's just them being too lazy / inept to do something isn't a great motivating factor to help someone, as most people are far more willing to help if you meet them half way.